Book Recs

[mis_creation]

Hee, Nefret fell off the bed this morning. Since she was trying to grapple with my hand at the time, claws out but not digging in, and trying to chew on my fingers, I didn't feel too bad. She wasn't hurt and she just licked herself to show how much she didn't care. But it was funny. Cats really aren't that graceful sometimes.

Anyway, on to the book recomendations:

Book Recs!

Okay, the first book rec is actually a book-on-CD rec, because that's how I got it. Actually, Jennifer Crusie did a great blog post about it, and I love Jenny Crusie so I went and requested the book she recommended on CD from another library and got it.

• Thin is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel. Valerie Frankel has been on my to-read list for years. I'm a fan of her mysteries, which no one else I've met has ever heard of, and I loved her book Smart Vs. Pretty about sisters. So, this book is about her going from cronic dieter with major weight and food issues to being happy with herself, happy with her body, and having a healthier attitude towards food. It's a nice autobiography at the same time.
  
  This book did a lot for me. For one thing, it underscored that I don't actually have that many issues with my body. One of the things she did, was she got a clicker-counter, and clicked every time she had a conscious negative thought about her body, her weight, her looks, eating, or food. She had several hundred clicks in the course of a day, something that broke down to a negative thought every six minutes (I think, I need to listen to it again or get the print book to double-check). And I don't have those. My issues stem from other people's perception of my body, not my body itself, and the negative thoughts I have are about other people judging me by my weight. Yes, I'd like to lose a few pounds, I'd like to work out more, get healthier. But mostly, I like me and my body; it's other people I have issue with.
  
  And for guys who've wondered why women obsess the way we do over clothes, diets, weight and food, this is a good look. For Valerie Frankel, it was about her mother harrassing her about her weight, and the kids at school who teased her about it. It's the same for a lot of women. And Valerie, even at her heaviest, was still two sizes and at least 50lbs lighter than me. That doesn't stop most people, though, from feeling overweight. Paraphrased: "I was far more forgiving of other people's weight issues than I was of my own."
  
  In the third chapter she sites a study done that finds that 80% of women with body-image issues had parents that commented or even actively made fun of them for weight issues. To which, I would like to say: DUH. As much as we women like to point the finger at "the media" (and it is a factor still, but not the biggest), it really is those closest to us that have the biggest impact. So the reason I don't actually have body image issues, never knocked myself out dieting, never developed an eating disorder? Because of my parents. Because my mother never that I can recall said anything about my being too overweight, and neither did my father. They had plenty to say when I quit basketball because I was disliked by and disliked in turn my teammates, likewise with softball.
  
  And it took me a while to realize this. I think it was probably when I became friends with a girl in high school. I can't even remember now how we met or why we started talking. She was a smoker, into drugs (though never around me of course), and definitely was not a geek. She lived on the opposite side of town from me in a house farm where all the houses looked exactly the same. She was different than me in more ways than we were similar. But we still became friends, and hung out a lot. And when I would go over to her house (I had a car, she didn't) I would hear her mother telling her not to eat so much, to go out and excersize, to lose weight, how fat she looked in that outfit.
  
  She weight maybe 130, if that. And there I was, somewhere around the 200lb mark. I kept trying to tell my friend that her mother was full of shit. That if she thinks that about her daughter, who was skinny with a tiny bit of baby fat around her cheeks and middle, what the hell did she think of me? I must've been a whale to her. But her mother's voice was far louder than mine, and I'm not sure she ever did hear me. So, yeah, any parent who makes fun of their children for anything automatically is reduced to "ASSHOLE" in my mind, no matter what it's about.
  
  ...Erm, sorry, got a bit side-tracked there. Anyway, I loved the book, even though it was hard to listen to sometimes. Her descriptions of being tortured in junior high just made my stomach hurt, and when she talks about her first husband dying of lung cancer it just about breaks your heart.
  
  And I'm kind of torn on this. Because as much as this was supposed to be a journey out of chronic-dieting and into self-acceptance, she still lost those last pounds and ended up a New York City size 8, which is more than acceptable anywhere but the runway. I wonder if she still would've been as happy with the result if she'd been a "natural" size 14, 16 or 18, or gods forbid a 20-24. Because as hard as she had it, she was still thinner than the average woman in America even at her thickest. It felt very mixed-message-y to me. I mean, just take the CD-back-cover summary: "Not wanting to pass this legacy [of bad body-image] to her own daughters, Valerie set out to cleanse herself of those painful and damaging cycles. Yes, she lost twenty pounds and two dress sizes along the way--without dieting a single day. But more than that, she's come out on the other side, loving her body, herself, and finally being free."
  
  Of course she is; she's accomplished her weight-loss goals. Would she still "love her body, herself and finally [be] free" if she had remained in double-digit sizes? That something we can't answer, of course, but it does make me question the book.



• Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor. This books is a new-world study of a book Mayor had already written: The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. This one is about the interpretation of fossils into Native American (or First nation, or many other names she uses in the book) lore and mythology. It's an interesting look and a surprisingly hefty read for a subject that is so underdocumented. The subject itself is interesting, but then Mayor also adds in several subtle "Up Yours" rebuffs to one George Gaylord Simpson, who published a book/paper/whatever (it's unclear) in 1957 stating in those oh-so-lofty academic terms that Native Americans were basically too stupid and savage to realize that fossils were anything but interesting rocks. She refutes his claim with documented statements, some from the mid 1800s from Native Americans talking about fossils having once been living things.
  
  I wish I hadn't had to return the book, but it was already overdue. It's a fun read, not a quick one, and it is a bit academic in areas, but it is mostly a very cool study and a new way of looking at mythology. I also learned a lot about American (both North and South) fossils that I hadn't even had an inkling of before, and now I kind of want to take a road trip around looking at famous fossil sites.
  
  Also, I just checked out the page on Amazon and looked at the customer reviews, and the only one less than four stars was a three-star review that points out that scientists are "afraid" to do carbon tests on dinosaurs becuase it might prove that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. So, yeah, that was good for an eye-roll.



• Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. This book is gross, disgusting, hilarious, thought-provoking, and awesome. I'm not even done with it yet, but even if I hate the rest of the book, I'll recommend it up to whatever page I'm currently on. Mary Roach has also written Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex both of which are on my to-read list.
  
  Stiff is one of those books that you probably shouldn't like, but love anyway. It's total guilty pleasure, gross-out reading. It's kind of like reality TV, only more information-laden. There's several facts in there you never wanted to know, and I actually gagged a couple of times reading some of the descriptions of things going on. But I laughed way more times than I gagged, simply because Roach's writing is extremely light-hearted considering the subject. But that just makes it even better. And still, there are some very touching and insightful moments in the book. It's kind of a roller-coaster read, but a good one.